A former ambassador to China and potential 2012 GOP candidate on the power of optimism:

Remember others. The greatest exercise for the human heart isn't jogging or aerobics or weight lifting – it's reaching down and lifting another up. Find a cause larger than yourself, then speak out and take action. Never let it be said that you were too timid or too weak to stand by your cause. Learn what it feels like to give 100 percent to others. It’ll change your life.

The rise of the “wildly lucrative” herbal incense business, and the downfall of one company.

You know this one: German guy heads into tribal jungle deep upriver, sends the company crazy reports full of radical ideas—and then goes totally rogue. Only this time it's not ivory he's after. It's a secret lost for centuries: the finest cacao on earth.

A profile of Travis Kalanick, who resigned from the ride the ride-hailing company he built after leading it to the brink of implosion.

Look, this is about Russia. So I think if [Robert Mueller] wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. And actually, when I do my filings, peoples say, “Man.” People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company anymore. I think about this. ’Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial. O.K.? I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son, two nice people. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow.

As it scrambled to compete, the tech company cut tens of thousands of U.S. workers, hitting its most senior employees hardest and flouting rules against age bias.

Amid the complex web of international trade, proving the authenticity of a product can be near-impossible. But one company is taking the search to the atomic level.

The daily deals company turned down a $6 billion offer from Google and went public. Now its stock is down 80% and its founder/CEO has been fired. On Groupon’s failed strategy and tenuous future.

After losing his sight at age 3, Michael May went on to become the first blind CIA agent, set a world record for downhill skiing, and start a successful Silicon Valley company. Then he got the chance to see again.

“J.Crew employees reveal themselves by the nakedness of their ankles. It’s as if the company’s uniform, ambiently dictated by Lyons, is enforced only from the knees down.”

On Kimora Lee Simmons, then the head of the Baby Phat clothing company and wife of Russell Simmons.

“Let me take off my glasses,” she says, removing her large frames. “I want you to see my eyes. I will beat a bitch’s ass!”

A controversial billion-dollar citizenship-for-sale business led the elections firm to conduct clandestine campaigns across the Caribbean, insiders say.

One teammate made tennis his whole life. The other had a grandfather whose company invented Hot Pockets. Guess which one went to Georgetown as a Division I recruit.

Sandy Jenkins was a shy, daydreaming accountant at the Texas headquarters of Collin Street Bakery, the world’s most famous fruitcake company. He was tired of feeling invisible, so he started stealing — and got a little carried away.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, on the eve of the release of The Social Network, believed to be a deeply unflattering portrait of him and the genesis of his company.

A look at the legislative lobbying efforts of Michael Bloomberg’s $7 billion-per-year company. While the mayor has no specific day-to-day role at Bloomberg LP, he maintains “the type of involvement that he believes is consistent with his being the majority shareholder.”